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PubMed1981

Symbolic play in autistic, Down's, and normal children of equivalent mental age.

The study assessed free play and response to modeled symbolic play with animate toys and realistic and substitute accessories in 10 autistic children and 10 Down's syndrome and 10 normal preschooler controls. Groups were matched on Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test mental age (PPVT MA) range and Mdn (2.5 years). Autistic children played less than controls, imitated less well, and, on structured baseline trials, showed lower level play. Symbolic fluency differentiated all groups in structured play. Symbolic fluency for free and structured play was positively correlated with PPVT MA in autistic children; level of play was most highly correlated with PPVT MA in normal children. Findings suggested impaired imitative capacity and symbolic functioning in autism.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed2007

Symbolic play in children with autism spectrum disorder.

The relationship between symbolic play and other domains, such as degree of autistic symptomatology, nonverbal cognitive ability, receptive language, expressive language, and social development, was investigated. The assessment files of 101 children with Autism Spectrum Disorder were studied. Nonverbal cognitive ability and expressive language were both significantly and uniquely related to symbolic play, although receptive language was not. Autistic symptomatology ceased to be significantly related to symbolic play when controlling for two or more other variables. Social development was related to symbolic play in those children with high nonverbal cognitive ability but not those with low nonverbal cognitive ability. The diagnostic and treatment implications of these results are discussed.

Autistic Disorder↗
PubMed1986

A neural basis for symbol development.

Understanding of cognitive function and dysfunction depends on a knowledge of the neural substrate for symbol formation. Despite a vast literature on the nature of symbolism, fundamental neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the ontogeny of symbol formation have been neglected. This paper develops a theory outlining the formation and evolution of a symbol couched in terms of the neural substrate.

Agnosia↗
PubMed1995

Steering through the murky waters of a scientific conflict: situated and symbolic models of clinical cognition.

The situated action perspective, which embraces a diversity of views, challenges several of the fundamental assumptions of the symbolic information-processing framework underlying cognitive science and artificial intelligence. In this paper, we consider the following issues; symbolic representations, plans and actions, distributed cognition, and the transfer of learning. We evaluate each of these issues in terms of research and theories in clinical cognition and examine the implications for education and training, and for the integration of intelligent systems in medical practice. We argue for a reconceptualization of the symbolic framework in terms of the way the role of internal representations and cognitive activities are perceived. However, symbolic representations are integral to medical cognition and should continue to be central in any theoretical framework. A re-examination of cognitive science in medicine in terms of the relationship among physicians, technology, and the workplace could prove to be constructive in bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed2005

Odor mixture alters neural resources during symbolic problem solving.

The smell of a cup of coffee is produced by many different odor chemicals combined in a mixture, yet the perception of that odor is of a single unified whole. Recent evidence has demonstrated that mixtures of odors share some of the same spatiotemporal features of speech sounds and may use similar brain resources in associating those features with the symbols they represent. This experiment investigated the hypothesis that an odor mixture would interfere with a math task that requires symbolic but not spatial processing. Results indicated the pattern of brain electrical activity was similar for the single odors and the mixture during spatial processing. During solution of the task requiring symbolic processing, the odor mixture produced a pattern of brain electrical activity different from the single odorants. These data suggest that the perception of odor mixtures may use some of the same resources associated with symbolic processing.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Factors affecting preference ratings of prohibitive symbols.

A sign consisting of a pictorial overlaid with a red circle-slash (i.e., a red circle with a red slash) is used ubiquitously to convey the message that some activity is prohibited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pictorial solidity, size, and direction of elongation (DE) of the pictorial and orientation and thickness of the red circle-slash on the preference ratings for prohibitive symbols. Solid (filled) pictorials were rated better than pictorials in outline form. Pictorials with a size equal to or greater than 75% of the length of the inner diameter of the circle-slash were rated higher than pictorials 50% in size. The effect of pictorial DE was not significant: pictorials with a greater vertical DE (i.e., tall/thin pictorials) did not differ from pictorials with a greater horizontal DE (i.e., short/wide pictorials), in terms of their preference ratings. However, pictorial DE interacted with slash orientation. Diagonal slashes were rated better than vertical or horizontal ones. Further, symbols were rated better when the thickness of the red circle-slash was such that its resulting area comprised 25% of the total area inside its outer circle at least. Moreover, the interaction of pictorial size and slash thickness indicated that the preference for prohibitive symbols of thicker slash and smaller pictorial size might be degraded drastically. Implications of the results for the design of prohibitive symbols were discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Indexical and symbolic referencing: what role do they play in children's success on theory of mind tasks?

Numerous measures have been employed in the last 17 years to assess theory of mind (ToM). The literature reports marked variability in the age at which children succeed on these measures. To account for this variability, researchers have provided explanations ranging from cognitive shifts and voids to the inability to understand the language of the tasks or to social/pragmatic considerations, all of which tell us little if anything about the internal mechanism underlying ToM. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive theoretical account of children's success and the discrepancies found across different ToM tasks. We test the hypothesis that children's understanding of ToM is sensitive to the basic elements of language, that is, to whether the language is indexical or symbolic. Support for this account was found in the analysis of selected test protocols in four published studies of ToM, and new data collected from 53 children (4--6 years) which showed that a higher percentage of children succeeded on tasks with a high ratio of indexical to symbolic references than on tasks with a high ratio of symbolic to indexical references. There was also a main effect of age with older children succeeding at higher rates on both tasks than younger children. Our findings suggest that indexical representation can afford ToM understanding in 4-year-olds, but is not sufficient for a more mature ToM. The latter requires symbolic representation that was demonstrated by the majority of 5--6-year-olds.

Child↗
PubMed2000

Automatic analysis of signals with symbolic content.

This paper presents a set of methods for helping in the analysis of signals with particular features that admit a symbolic description. The methodology is based on a general discrete model for a symbolic processing subsystem, which is fuzzyfied by means of a fuzzy inference system. In this framework a number of design problems have been approached. The curse of dimensionality problem and the specification of adequate membership functions are the main ones. In addition, other strategies, which make the design process simpler and more robust, are introduced. Their goals are automating the production of the rule base of the fuzzy system and composing complex systems from simpler subsystems under symbolic constrains. These techniques are applied to the analysis of wakefulness episodes in the sleep EEG. In order to solve the practical difficulty of finding remarkable situations from the outputs of the symbolic subsystems an unsupervised adaptive learning technique (FART network) has been applied.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed1998

Medicine, symbolization and the "real" body--Lacan's understanding of medical science.

Throughout the 20th century, philosophers have criticized the scientific understanding of the human body. Instead of presenting the body as a meaningful unity or Gestalt, it is regarded as a complex mechanism and described in quasi-mechanistic terms. In a phenomenological approach, a more intimate experience of the body is presented. This approach, however, is questioned by Jacques Lacan. According to Lacan, three basic possibilities of experiencing the body are to be distinguished: the symbolical (or scientific) body, the imaginary (or ideal) body and the real body. Whereas the symbolical body is increasingly objectified (and even digitalized) by medical science, the phenomenological perception amounts to an idealization of the body. The real body cannot be perceived immediately. Rather, it emerges in the folds and margins of our efforts to symbolize or idealize the body, which are bound to remain incomplete and fragile. In the first part of the article (section 1-section 3), Lacan's conceptual distinction between the symbolical, the imaginary and the real body will be explained. In the second part (section 4-section 5), this distinction will be further clarified by relying on crucial chapters in the history of anatomy (notably Mundinus, Vesalius, Da Vinci and Descartes).

Anatomy↗
PubMed2003

The origins of symbolic racism.

The theory of symbolic racism places its origins in a blend of anti-Black affect and conservative values, particularly individualism. We clarify that hypothesis, test it directly, and report several findings consistent with it. Study 1 shows that racial prejudice and general political conservatism fall into 2 separate factors, with symbolic racism loading about equally on both. Study 2 found that the anti-Black affect and individualism significantly explain symbolic racism. The best-fitting model both fuses those 2 elements into a single construct (Black individualism) and includes them separately. The effects of Black individualism on racial policy preferences are mostly mediated by symbolic racism. Study 3 shows that Black individualism is distinctively racial, with effects distinctly different from either an analogous gender individualism or race-neutral individualism.

Attitude↗
PubMed1984

Hypothesis-testing and nonlinguistic symbolic abilities in language-impaired children.

This study sought to clarify further the cognitive abilities of language-impaired children by examining their hypothesis-testing and nonlinguistic symbolic abilities. A discrimination learning task and a concept formation task were used to measure hypothesis-testing abilities, and a haptic (touch) recognition task was used to assess nonlinguistic symbolic abilities. Subjects were 10 language-impaired and 10 language-normal children matched for performance Mental Age. Measures of expressive and receptive language were also obtained from each child. The language-impaired children were found to perform significantly poorer than their MA controls on the haptic recognition task and on a portion of the discrimination learning task. No differences were found between the two groups' concept formation abilities. Correlational analyses revealed a particularly strong positive relationship between performance on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test and the haptic recognition tasks. It was speculated that this relationship was motivated by the symbolic demands of these tasks. One implication of this speculation is that a symbolic representational deficit might better explain the receptive language deficit than the expressive one.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1992

Symbolic play development in toddlers with expressive specific language impairment (SLI-E).

Twenty toddlers with expressive specific language impairment (SLI-E) and 20 toddlers with normal language development were compared in their symbolic play development. The groups did not differ in amount of engagement with the toys or in functional conventional play behaviors. However, the children with SLI-E displayed less decentered play (use of play schemes with a doll or another person), less well-developed sequential play, and fewer occurrences of symbolic play transformations (use of a neutral object or an absent object to carry out pretending). The provision of structure in the form of thematically related toy sets, instructions, and modeling did not reduce the discrepancy between demonstrated play behaviors of toddlers with SLI-E and their normally developing peers. Three possible explanations for this discrepancy are considered: a "stylistic" difference in play, a developmental lag in symbol use, or a deficit in retrieval of stored symbolic representation.

Child Behavior↗
PubMed1983

[Symbolic representations of the eye in an ars memorandi of the 16th century].

Four illustrations containing various eye symbols are discussed. They appear in an early 16th-century mnemonic textbook of the Ars memorandi genre, called Rationarium evangelistarum. It was intended to help students to memorize the New Testament. The eye symbols in it refer twice to the healing of the blind, and once to the proverbial beam in the eye. Furthermore, a precursor of the later and very popular motif of the eye of God can also be found. It is easy to recognize eye symbols--even when they are simply depicted--since the eyes not only of human beings, but of all vertebrates are similar in their external appearance. This may help to explain why the eye is a common symbol in art, magic, ornamental decoration, and many other areas.

Books, Illustrated↗
PubMed2005

Neurophysiological signs of rapidly emerging visual expertise for symbol strings.

The current study examined whether the repeated visual presentation of novel, meaningless symbol strings triggers rapid changes in event related potentials (ERP). Adult participants performed three versions of a word and symbol string repetition detection task in the same experimental session. Analyses focussed on the occipito-temporal N1 (approximately 150 ms) known to reflect early word-specific processing and stimulus categorisation. While the N1 to words did not change, the occipito-temporal negativity to symbol strings increased over runs and converged with the word N1. Later (approximately 220 ms) more positive occipito-temporal amplitudes to repeated words in the third compared to the first run implied a repetition priming effect. This suggests that symbol string processing changed over time due to visual learning and increased perceptual expertise.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The role of social-referential context in verbal and nonverbal symbol learning.

This study examined the role of social-referential context in 13- and 18-month-olds' mapping of verbal and nonverbal symbols to object categories. Infants heard either novel words or novel nonverbal sounds in either a referential or nonreferential context. In all conditions, an experimenter engaged in a social-referential interaction and the label was produced while the infant's attention was directed to the referent. In the referential condition, labels were produced by the experimenter within the context of a familiar naming routine. In the nonreferential condition, labels were emitted from a baby monitor placed near the infant. The study subsequently tested infants' mapping of the symbols to the referent objects using a forced-choice procedure. Although the results for the 18-month-olds were strongest, infants at both ages showed evidence of learning both words and sounds in the referential condition and failed to learn them in the nonreferential condition. Thus, infants successfully learned both words and sounds under the same circumstances at both ages. These findings suggest that the social-referential context, and not the symbolic form per se, determine infants' success at symbol learning.

Female↗
PubMed1990

Playful relationships: a contextual analysis of mother-toddler interaction and symbolic play.

The relation between social interaction and complexity of toddler's symbolic play was investigated. 57 toddlers between 15 and 24 months of age were observed under 4 conditions: (1) child play alone, (2) child play with mother, (3) child modeling mother, and (4) child play with mother following the modeling condition. Each subject was rated on complexity of play, maternal attention directing, reciprocity, and maternal intrusiveness. Significant condition effects were found in which more complex forms of play were observed when the children were playing with their mothers than when playing by themselves. Maternal intrusions and questioning were negatively related to symbolic play. Turn-taking was negatively related to simple exploratory play. Results of a sequential analysis demonstrated that turn-taking was more likely to precede symbolic play, and maternal intrusiveness was more likely to precede simple exploratory play. The role of active partnership in symbolic play development is discussed.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The development of symbol-infused joint engagement.

Fifty-six children were observed longitudinally from 18 to 30 months of age interacting with their mothers during a Communication Play that contained 8 scenes designed to encourage interacting, requesting, commenting, and narrating. Of primary concern was how often symbols infused the child's states of engagement with people and objects and how experience in such symbol-infused states related to language acquisition. Findings indicate that symbols increasingly infuse joint engagement, and that both the timing and the trajectory vary widely among typically developing toddlers, especially during the last half of the 2nd year. Moreover, variations in amount of symbol-infused supported joint engagement may both be influenced by variations in the onset of language and contribute to differences in language facility at 30 months.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Three- to four-year-olds' recognition that symbols have a stable meaning: pictures are understood before written words.

In 4 experiments 120 three- to four-year-old nonreaders were asked the identity of a symbolic representation as it appeared with different objects. Consistent with Bialystok (2000), many children judged the identity of written words to vary according to the object with which they appeared but few made such errors with recognizable pictures. Children also made few errors when the symbols were unrecognizable pictures. In Experiments 2 to 4 this pattern of responses was preserved in conditions that made it unlikely or impossible for children to answer correctly by taking the symbol to refer to one of the objects with which it appeared. Instead, correct answers required children to appreciate that the symbol had a generic, abstract meaning.

Child, Preschool↗